A One Semester Introduction to
Honors General Chemistry
Stephen Lee
,
,Dear Fall 2026 Chem 2150 student,
More than anyone, it was my Ph.D. advisor, Jeremy Burdett, an inorganic chemist at the
University of Chicago, who taught me to visualize chemical compounds, and it was my father
Tsung-Dao Lee, a theoretical physicist at Columbia University, who taught me the role of insight
in math and physics. It was Roald Hoffmann, with whom Jeremy worked with as a post-doc at
Cornell University, and Enrico Fermi, who was my father’s Ph.D. advisor at the University of
Chicago, who were among those who helped teach Jeremy and father.
I am seventy now. There is nothing more, I would rather do now then to pass to you, a student in
Cornell’s Honors freshman Gen Chem class, the mantle of what my teachers taught me, and what
their teachers taught them. We’ll examine together in this course a collection of stories: the story
of acids and bases, the story of electrons in atoms, the story of the chemical bond, and the story
of entropy.
In each of these subjects, we will follow my teachers and go beyond the AP or IB HL Chem
$
syllabi. AP and IB HL Chem teaches one how to use equations such as ∆𝐺!"# = −𝑅𝑇 𝑙𝑛 𝐾 or
$ $ $
∆𝐺!"# = ∆𝐻!"# − 𝑇∆𝑆!"# . But for my teachers, using equations was not enough: their goal
was always to go a step beyond, and to find circumstances that allowed one to understand and
deduce the equations. So this will be our goal in this Honors Gen Chem class.
Looking ahead to our classes and problem sets, I do see challenges. Can I encourage you to
accept these challenges? To be honest, I know, from my time as a student, that it was only when
I finally accepted the challenges, I found myself seeing what it was my teachers wanted me to
see. Now that I am seventy, I have learned it is helpful, in facing these challenges, to encourage
the growth mind set and the use of Polya’s Method of Problem Solution.
May I propose our goal, as the semester unfolds, with our joint effort, of seeing your brilliance
and your science inheriting my teachers’ brilliance and their science?
With best wishes, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Stephen Lee aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Cornell University
August, 2026
,
Honors General Chemistry
Stephen Lee
,
,Dear Fall 2026 Chem 2150 student,
More than anyone, it was my Ph.D. advisor, Jeremy Burdett, an inorganic chemist at the
University of Chicago, who taught me to visualize chemical compounds, and it was my father
Tsung-Dao Lee, a theoretical physicist at Columbia University, who taught me the role of insight
in math and physics. It was Roald Hoffmann, with whom Jeremy worked with as a post-doc at
Cornell University, and Enrico Fermi, who was my father’s Ph.D. advisor at the University of
Chicago, who were among those who helped teach Jeremy and father.
I am seventy now. There is nothing more, I would rather do now then to pass to you, a student in
Cornell’s Honors freshman Gen Chem class, the mantle of what my teachers taught me, and what
their teachers taught them. We’ll examine together in this course a collection of stories: the story
of acids and bases, the story of electrons in atoms, the story of the chemical bond, and the story
of entropy.
In each of these subjects, we will follow my teachers and go beyond the AP or IB HL Chem
$
syllabi. AP and IB HL Chem teaches one how to use equations such as ∆𝐺!"# = −𝑅𝑇 𝑙𝑛 𝐾 or
$ $ $
∆𝐺!"# = ∆𝐻!"# − 𝑇∆𝑆!"# . But for my teachers, using equations was not enough: their goal
was always to go a step beyond, and to find circumstances that allowed one to understand and
deduce the equations. So this will be our goal in this Honors Gen Chem class.
Looking ahead to our classes and problem sets, I do see challenges. Can I encourage you to
accept these challenges? To be honest, I know, from my time as a student, that it was only when
I finally accepted the challenges, I found myself seeing what it was my teachers wanted me to
see. Now that I am seventy, I have learned it is helpful, in facing these challenges, to encourage
the growth mind set and the use of Polya’s Method of Problem Solution.
May I propose our goal, as the semester unfolds, with our joint effort, of seeing your brilliance
and your science inheriting my teachers’ brilliance and their science?
With best wishes, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Stephen Lee aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Cornell University
August, 2026
,
